On the morning of April 25, the Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People's Court carried out trial to consolidate four cases involving trot and administrative confirmation of rights for medical invention patents.

Two medical invention patents of “Levo-Ornidazole” from Shenghe Company were involved in two cases of infringement for patent rights. The Shanghai Intellectual Property Court believed that Warner Company and CITIC Company infringed the aforementioned two patent rights of Shenghe Company in the first instance, and judged the two companies to jointly compensate Shenghe Company in total of 800,000 yuan for economic losses and reasonable expenses. The trial implemented investigations based on whether the alleged infringing product "“Levo-Ornidazole Tablet" belongs to the prior art and whether it has priority right.

In two cases of administrative disputes over the invalidation of patent rights, Huamei Company filed an invalidation request for the above-mentioned two patents. The CNIPA reckoned that both patents involves inventive step and maintained the validity of the patent rights. The first-instance of Beijing Intellectual Property Court judged revoking the sued decision and its new decision by the CNIPA. The CNIPA and Shenghe Company both refused to accept it and appealed to the Supreme People’s Court, claiming that the technical problem to be solved by the two patents is providing a medicine with less toxicity and safer medication, and the prior art did not give technical enlightenment, so it involves inventive step. Huamei Company defended that it is inevitable to find the medical use of "Levo-Ornidazole" during the research and development of chiral drugs. During the trial, all parties engaged in a fierce debate on the creative issue of the patent involved. The case was not sentenced in court.

The Intellectual Property Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court adopted a “two-in-one” collaborative trial model for the technical intellectual property administrative and civil appeal cases, which systematically guaranteed the simultaneous trial and coordination of administrative case of rights confirmation and civil case of infringement, effectively alleviating bottlenecks in litigation procedures, for instance, the "long period" of patent holders' rights protection. In order to enable the full and in-depth progress of the confrontation between all parties, the administrative case and civil infringement case involving the same patent right were handed over to the same collegiate panel.

From The Supreme People’s Court

April 26th, 2021